Former Baltimore officer pleads guilty to pimping teenage wife

Lamin Manneh

Handout photo

Lamin Manneh, a former Baltimore Police officer, was charged with pimping out his wife after officers from a human trafficking task force found him outside a hotel room where the woman had agreed to have sex for cash with an undercover officer.

Lamin Manneh, a former Baltimore Police officer, was charged with pimping out his wife after officers from a human trafficking task force found him outside a hotel room where the woman had agreed to have sex for cash with an undercover officer. (Handout photo)

Manneh, who was assigned to the police's Eastern District, carried his service weapon as he chaperoned the women to the meetings and agreed to intervene if the clients became aggressive, according to the U.S. attorney's office. He would rent hotel rooms and an apartment to facilitate "in-calls" or ferry the women to locations chosen by their clients.

Manneh's attorney could not be reached for comment.

Manneh was arrested after being caught in a sting by Maryland State Police after an undercover trooper on a child-sex trafficking task force responded to one of his online ads. Police arranged to meet Manneh's wife at a hotel near BWI-Thurgood Marshall Airport, and inside she said she charged $100 for sex.

Manneh's wife was arrested on a prostitution charge filed in Anne Arundel County, but those charges were dropped in September, records show.

In a federal indictment filed against Manneh in August, prosecutors said his wife had entered into a "contract of slavery" with him and agreed to be subservient to him as her "master." Manneh kept all his wife's prostitution earnings, the U.S. attorney's office said, and a share of the other woman's.

Manneh could be sentenced to up to five years in prison at a hearing scheduled for May.

Prosecutors announced new indictments Monday of Baltimore jail staff, the same day a top corrections official testified in the federal corruption trial of eight inmates and corrections officers about the difficulty containing misconduct in the system.